In addition to protecting the safety of motoring members of the fair sex (and quite possibly boosting sales of long blonde wigs), this modest proposal for sexual apartheid on wheels should have the added advantage of significantly reducing Sheila’s claims figures and enhancing returns to investors.

These zones will thereafter be restricted to women, and presumably, given that the PinkZone name is a registered trade mark of the British Gay Alliance, homosexual men. Whether straight males are to be allowed in these lanes as passengers was unclear as Bankstone News went to press (i.e. it was already unclear; we didn’t have to make it that way this time).

Some random statistics quoted in Sheila’s joint press release with IAMs (“Good for today. Good for life”) suggest that men cause more accidents than women, are less likely to be seriously injured in these accidents, and, curiously, are four times more likely than women to be convicted of driving a fence.

Replacing the current blurred lanes with segregated ones would keep lady drivers out of harm’s way, brighten up all those drab grey expanses of tarmac, and perhaps assuage the anxieties of Moslem groups opposed to men and women sharing road space.